Let’s start with some nonsense.
The Walt Disney Company is about to do the unthinkable: retire Mickey Mouse.
Inside the Magic reports that Disney is bringing The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse animated shorts to an end with tribute to The Mouse’s first short Steamboat Willie:
Since 2020, Mickey Mouse has starred in the animated Disney+ series The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse … The series was a direct continuation of the Disney Channel series Mickey Mouse, which was highly acclaimed for its return to classic Disney slapstick humor and won numerous Emmy and Annie Awards … However, Disney has announced that the final episode of The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse will air today [July 28], featuring the main Mouse himself teaming up with his black and white incarnation Steamboat Willie.
Writer Nathan Karmal then postulates that next year’s event of Steamboat Willie entering public domain is a major factor in ending the current Mickey Mouse shorts and and the company fading the character into the background.
As such, it really seems like Disney is finally phasing out Mickey Mouse.
Seems to me that Nathan has gone plain crazy thinking The Mouse is being evicted from The House.
Read Disney’s piece on the end of The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse.
Short Takes:
The 2023 San Diego Comic Con Souvenir Book is available as a free pdf.
Feature articles on Mort Walker , Howard the Duck, Disney, Last Gasp Comix, Blade, Weird Tales, Warner Bros., The Human Target, Pogo,Red Sonja, Shang-Chi, and the Direct Market. Dozens of creator profiles and an In Memoriam section. More.
Cartoonist John Lund has some thoughts on newspaper comics.
These days, I no longer read about comic strips nor read other people’s comic strips for the most part. I think that most comics are too complex for my tastes. I find nothing wrong with the pure and simple approach. It may be too underwhelming for intellectual and sophisticated minds, but not for me, as I find it charming.
CBLDF, ABA, AAP, BOOKSELLERS SUE OVER NEW TEXAS LAW
Requiring Booksellers to Rate Materials Sold to Libraries
The new law, due to go into effect on September 1, would require any vendor selling to a school library, including booksellers, to determine “current community standards of decency” and label books sold to school libraries as “sexually relevant” or “sexually explicit” based on depictions or descriptions of “sexual conduct.”
This could be in the nonsense category as The Ocean Beach Rag recommends The San Diego Union-Tribune hire Lalo Alcaraz to replace the spot left by Steve Breen’s departure.
Now that Steven Breen is out at the Union-Tribune as its long-time editorial cartoonist, the local daily — recently purchased by a hedge fund — is in dire need of a local artist with the gravitas of taking on issues in a comic way.
So, stand aside!
The OB Rag hereby recommends local boy, Lalo Alvaraz — artist of the award-winning “La Cucaracha” daily cartoon series — for the U-T’s new editorial cartoonist!
The idea of Alden Capital hiring an editorial cartoonist is pure fantasy!
The Thomasville Times-Enterprise embraces the raucous reaction.
Newspapers have a long tradition of publishing controversial cartoons.
The most provocative and controversial newspaper cartoons helped spark the American Revolution.
The Thomasville Times- Enterprise intentionally publishes those kinds of editorial cartoons.
They are intended to stimulate conversation and make people think.
We believe an editorial page should be a robust marketplace of ideas and not merely a mouthpiece for those in positions of power.
The primary purpose behind editorial cartoons, ironically, is not to be funny. The art form is intended to push buttons with a tinge of humor or sarcasm.
Book Review: downthetubes reviews Desegregating Comics
Recently published by Rutgers University Press is Desegregating Comics – Debating Blackness in the Golden Age of American Comics, edited by Qiana Whitted.
Desegregating Comics assembles a team of leading scholars to explore how debates about the representation of Blackness shaped both the production and reception of Golden Age comics. Some essays showcase rare titles like Negro Romance and consider the formal innovations introduced by Black comics creators like Matt Baker and Alvin Hollingsworth, while others examine the treatment of race in the work of such canonical cartoonists as George Herriman and Will Eisner.
The collection also investigates how Black fans read and loved comics, but implored publishers to stop including hurtful stereotypes. As this book shows, Golden Age comics artists, writers, editors, distributors, and readers engaged in heated negotiations over how Blackness should be portrayed, and the outcomes of those debates continue to shape popular culture today.
WCCO-TV has a segment on the new Charles Schulz exhibit in St. Paul.
Get to know more about the famous cartoonist who created loveable comic characters Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the Peanuts gang. An exhibit showing the Life and Art of native Minnesotan Charles Schulz will open its doors Saturday at the Minnesota History Center.
Annie Johnson with Minnesota History Center gave us an early look inside.
Click here to learn more about the exhibit on display through June of next year.
Mickey Mouse is trademarked, so while some of the films will be in public domain, the character never will be.
I highly doubt that Disney is retiring Mickey Mouse. After 10 years, maybe they feel that the Paul Rudish shorts don’t have the impact they did at first. When they first started, they ran on The Disney Channel and YouTube, but now they’re exclusive to Disney+, so perhaps they don’t have the reach they had on YouTube.
While anybody will soon be able to use the images from Steamboat Willie, it is specifically that version of Mickey Mouse which will be in the public domain, and no other until successive cartoons fade into public domain. So exploiters of that status must be very careful they don’t use newer Mickeys, otherwise Disney has every right to sue them for violating their trademark. And of course, just because Steamboat Willie (and individual cartoons thereafter) is no longer exclusively Disney’s, nothing prevents them from continuing to use them as if they were; they remain Disney cartoons forever. And Disney has issued nearly 100 Steamboat Willie products over the past year, so why would anybody want to buy a knockoff version?
I don’t want Disney to retire Mickey Mouse, it’s only 5 years until that famous Disney character reaches 100.
There already was a 30-year dry spell (no new Mickey Mouse films) from 1953 to 1983. You can’t make a great comeback if you never leave.